


The Distance of Two People

by Ponderosa



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Explicit Consent, F/M, First Time, Intimacy, Kissing, Raleigh Becket loves giving head, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:07:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponderosa/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most teams were siblings or lovers, and those that weren’t often fell into the patterns of one or the other. They’d only been together for a handful of days, but their bond was amazingly powerful, and the knot in his chest is hard to untangle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Distance of Two People

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Desdemona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdemona/gifts).



> Thanks to hobbitdragon and autoschediastic for giving this a look over and reassuring me that I wasn't spilling too many feels everywhere.

In the transport they sit side by side with their bodies lined up from shoulder to knee. A pair of guard helicopters lead the way, and the ride is full of turbulence. Pressed so close to Mako, Raleigh feels every bump twice, the plating of their drivesuits knocking together. The greener members of the crew have shifted more than once to make space for them while the vets simply sit back and grin as he and Mako don’t budge an inch. The crewmen that have escorted a few drops know that this can happen to pilots after their first prolonged Drift--when you’re so close in the conn pod, once you’re out, it can be hard to adjust. Raleigh puts his fingers in Mako’s palm somewhere around ten klicks out. By the time the helicopter touches down, their fingers are tangled.

*

There’s a hasty physical to endure, then speeches and cheering followed by drinking and congratulations, and later, after even more speeches--Tendo’s notably will go down in the history books--the night sky comes alive with fireworks. Mako adores them. As “heroes” they’re given a place to stand front and center, tucked right up against the railing that’s damp and chill from the ocean mist. Raleigh stands behind Mako, arms bracketing her, his hands next to hers on the metal. The crowd is so dense as to be claustrophobic--everyone in a fifty-mile radius who could get clearance to be here has done so--but the only body he’s conscious of is hers. You’d never know her tiredness mirrors his with the solid stance she keeps: Mako Mori is a tree among grasses, poised and unyielding as the triumphant cries of the surging crowd swallow the boom of the fireworks.

“<< _It’s very beautiful_ >>,” he says in Japanese, the pronunciation effortless this soon after drifting. That will fade and he’ll miss it, just like he missed having a bit of Yancy’s swagger for a week or two after a fight.

She agrees, not with words but with the turn of her body and a slight lean against him.

They watch a while longer, until the fireworks light up the silhouette of Cherno Alpha’s salvaged remains being flown back to base. The crowd goes crazy. With no pressing need to reclaim the scrap, the old Jaeger will be probably be restored externally to serve as a memorial. Being reminded of losing G---- a second time makes the dull ache in Raleigh’s chest turn into a sharp pang that stops his breathing.

“I want to leave,” Mako says, and takes hold of his wrist to guide him through the throng. She nods acknowledgment to those who feel the need to stop them, but she never pauses for long, riding the edge of politeness until they are back inside the Shatterdome where the halls stand empty and dark.

At the T intersection near their quarters, she stops and looks up at him. It takes him a moment to pull his gaze away from the too-shiny section of pipe that’s been patched into the line on the wall. “Can we go to your room?” she asks.

“We-- We don’t have to--” Raleigh’s brow furrows as he stumbles over his words. Most teams were siblings or lovers, and those that weren’t often fell into the patterns of one or the other. They’d only been together for a handful of days, but their bond was amazingly powerful, and the knot in his chest is hard to untangle.

Mako shifts her hold from his wrist to his hand, her strong, slender fingers folding over his. “I know. And we aren’t. We are just going to sleep.”

A fifty-pound weight lifts from Raleigh’s chest. It’s not that he feels he’d be bad for her, or that it couldn’t work like that--hell, she’s been in his skull, there’s no way she missed what he thought about her in her drivesuit--it’s just there are things that seem like a good idea when emotion and adrenaline runs high. She lost the last of her family today, and even if it can’t compare, the echo of it has hit him too.

Inside, with the lights dimmed and a radio tuned to the only station with music on the air, they strip down to their undershirts and collapse together on his bunk, legs tangling as they curl towards one another in the narrow space. His breath mixes hot with hers in the inches between them. It’s peaceful and surreal after the day they’ve had. And to think they’ll have hundreds of more days without anything coming out of the breach. The world can rebuild. Move on.

“We did it, Mako,” Raleigh says. Her eyes glisten in the low light. She touches the tips of her fingers to his face, her eyelids slipping shut when he can’t help but smile. On the radio a man is singing in Cantonese about how he doesn’t like to be alone, but is afraid to be alone with the woman he loves. Or, at least, that’s what Raleigh thinks the guy is saying. To be honest, his Cantonese is pretty awful and he could just be projecting. Though, as Mako twists a hand in the front of his shirt and tucks her head under his chin, he wonders if he’s fallen in love with her already. Softly, he presses a kiss into her hair and she curls even closer to him.

Each night for a week they sleep together like that. In the rest of the Shatterdome the party is still going strong, turning into a carnival of sorts, the joy of being alive fueling the celebration. 

*

On the tenth day of doing little more than sleeping and watching news broadcasts from around the world, Raleigh says, “We should go out.” He pulls on a fresh shirt and plucks one of Mako’s from the pile of clothes they’d ferried over from her room days ago. He wads it into a ball and tosses it at her, grinning as she shakes it out and makes a face at him. He turns to face the wall as she changes. “Let’s take a meal in the hall.”

He’ll never forget what it was like after Yancy--the numbness, the wondering when he’d stop turning around expecting to see his brother. “What do you think? ” he prods gently. If she asks to stay in again, just a bit longer, it won’t be the end of the world. She’s not on suicide watch, and the PPDC was already on its last legs, so they’ve got a few more days before the absolute mess of the program’s remains start hounding them to eval.

“Okay,” she says, and he turns around again to find her fastening her belt. She smoothes her hands down her front, and sits down again on the edge of the bunk. “But only if you get me my boots,” she adds, kicking a bare foot out.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and the curl of her smile hooks right into his belly.

Out and about they still get star treatment, but it’s less intrusive, most of the focus is on the Jaegers now—Cherno and Crimson and the makeshift shrines built up around their feet. They eat a meal in the mess hall, the conversation with the others at the long table so forgettable Raleigh puzzles to remember what had been said only moments before. Mako on the other hand is engaged, chatting animatedly with her friends. Mostly Raleigh just watches her talk, smiling when she does and watching the way her hands flutter as she punctuates her words with gestures.

He’s ready to jump in and give them both an out if it looks like she needs it, but when she excuses herself, it’s the first time that Raleigh takes a full and steady breath and knows that everything is going to be okay. They snag a couple tins of pudding and wander around for a while, eventually ending up in the hangar, cavernous now without the bustle of maintenance and incoming equipment. Sitting in companionable silence on the back of a flatbed cart, they watch as crewmen dangle from the catwalks in fragile-looking rigs and clean off the muck that came back with the Jaegers from the bottom of the bay. It’s like prodding a bruise to watch them work at the edges of ragged claw marks and acid damage, and it isn’t until Mako lays a hand on his arm that Raleigh realises he’s been trying to massage out an invisible ache there.

“Do you want to help them?” Mako asks.

Raleigh stares at the palms of his hands for a long time. One thing working on the Wall had taught him was that he wasn’t half bad at building things up even though most of his life had been focused on how well he could tear things apart. “Not today,” he says, fingers flexing.

Mako’s chin lifts, gaze aiming straight at Crimson Typhoon’s exposed heart. Her hands are in fists resting on the tops of her thighs. “I’m going to.”

The sudden warmth flooding Raleigh’s chest pushes out the dull ache in his arm. He tries to commit Mako’s profile to memory, to hold this moment inside him forever. “See you tonight? Back in my quarters?”

“I’d like that very much.”

When she leaves to join them, Raleigh stays long enough to watch her scramble up to the first catwalk and fall right in shoulder-to-shoulder with the other volunteers. With a lot less bounce in his step, he makes his way towards the Marshall’s office. There’s really only one person who could’ve been keeping the wolves at bay and making excuses to medical, psych, and the press, and Raleigh feels a twinge of embarrassment that he hadn’t thought to stop by sooner and say a proper thank you. 

It turns out that Herc won’t hear one from him anyway. He welcomes Raleigh in and deflects anything resembling gratitude. He seems mildly uncomfortable in a shirt and tie, but it could just be the tiredness shadowed under his eyes and the irritation of dealing with the sling. “How is she--Mako?” he asks, pushing a pile of paperwork off to the side of Pentecost’s old desk.

Raleigh takes a seat and gives Max a good scratch behind the ears. “Dealing. She’ll need to talk to someone besides me soon, but I think she knows it.”

“Well, that’s something,” Herc says, the relief more in his tone than in his expression. “He was a great man.”

It hadn’t occurred to Raleigh that Herc had known Stacker even longer than he had, or that Herc had lost a close friend along with a son that day. He looked at the overwhelming amount of paperwork a little more critically. With the program in shut-down mode, clerical staff would be the last to go, not the first. And Raleigh recognized the knickknacks on the desk from Alaska; Herc hadn’t even packed up Pentecost’s things. “How are you doing, sir?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, I’ve got Max for that,” Herc says, and he smiles when he hears the jingle of Max’s collar as the dog’s head jerks up at the sound of his name. “See?”

“Well, if you aren’t too busy, maybe join us at a meal sometime? I think it’d be good for Mako.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that.”

Raleigh can’t tell if he means it or if he’s only paying lip service, but he’s hopeful. “Sir.”

“Enough with the sirs. Get on out of here.”

*

It’s late, verging on midnight when Mako comes back. She’s fresh from the shower with her hair still damp, the towel hung around her neck catching lingering drops as she closes the door. Raleigh turns the radio down and automatically makes space on his bunk, but she doesn’t immediately cross to the bed and fold into the space beside him. She goes first to hang the towel over the bar by the small sink outside the head and when she strips down she folds her clothes neatly instead of leaving them crumpled on the floor. She seems truly present for the first night since they were plucked out of the ocean. Raleigh sets his book pages-down on his knee as she waits beside his bunk as if an invitation is needed.

In the span of time it takes for a breath to crawl back up his throat and catch there, it becomes clear that a wall has built back up between them--the distance of two people who don’t truly live inside one another’s heads. And they never would hit that point, not the effortless sync of knowing each other body and soul, anticipating thought, actions, and emotions outside the pod. Hell, they weren’t really a team anymore, not when there wouldn’t be any more Jaegers to pilot. Raleigh cocks his head to the side, a knot developing in his chest even after a ragged exhale frees the breath from his lungs. “It’s okay if you want to go back to your own room.” 

She leans over to grab his book, tucking the bookmark between the pages to save his place. She holds the old paperback with both hands, the top edge tucked just under her chin. She looks the portrait of innocence even when she shifts her weight and asks, “Do you want to have sex with me?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation.

“Good.” The book hits the floor, and this time when the warmth of her body fills the space beside him, it’s electric.

It’s tough to know what she’s seen--what’d come up in the RABIT when they’d drifted--if she knows what it was like for him in the past: the easy sex that came with being a pilot; the failed attempts at trying for relationships that were more than just good fun between the sheets; the crazy shit that happened when he picked up Yancy’s penchant for flirting shamelessly with anyone with a pulse; or the long years when he’d walked away from the program and refused all further pay in favor of scraping along alone.

“I haven’t been close to anyone since--”

Her fingers slide between his just like they had in the flight that had carried them home, her knuckles twisting to press against his. “Since your brother died.”

“Yeah, since Yancy.” His thumb rubs against hers, and the simple touch makes his whole arm tingle. He’s keenly aware of the calluses on the heel of her hand, the roughness at the pad of her thumb, the small, hard knot of scar tissue on her palm. To be honest, he’d never been close to anyone besides his brother, not emotionally. It’s something Mako would understand; she’d moved around a lot growing up too.

“It’s been a while for me, also,” Mako whispers, and the way she says it makes Raleigh feel like she’s read his mind and isn’t talking simply about sex. She hooks a leg over his and slides her weight on top of him, her thigh pressing firm between his. She feels solid despite how slight her weight seems, real and human and it feels so damn good to be skin to skin with someone. His whole body feels alive as she touches her fingertips to his jaw, lightly like the first night they’d shared his bed. The way she does it makes him feel like this is her way of connecting, of knowing that he’s real and here with her. Quietly, she says, “Can I kiss you?”

“I’d like that a lot,” he answers, final syllables whispered against her soft mouth.

The kiss starts with a lick, her tongue flicking out to wet his lips and make the press of their mouths together sweet and easy. It feels a little like he’s learning to kiss all over again; his body is certain it knows just what to do but his brain trips over the tiniest of things, making him second-guess the tilt of his head. They bump noses more than once, share breathy laughs as their lips dry and start to stick together, but that’s good too. Eventually they find their rhythm, and Raleigh catches Mako’s lip between his and sucks gently, easing a low, satisfied sound out her.

His hands settle near the small of her back as her tongue pushes into his mouth. She tests him in this, just like she had in the kwoon, and the sound he makes when her hands push into his hair and she kisses him harder kicks off a chain reaction. She presses closer, heat of her body seeping through her panties as she rocks against him. The wet tangling kiss echoes through her body like feedback: when their mouths soften again, so does her spine, her body molding against his. There’s a colony of butterflies alive inside him now, swooping around in the space beneath his ribs, making him nervous and excited at the same time. He desperately wants to roll Mako over to kiss his way down her front until his tongue is between her legs; instead he learns how to angle his head just right for the slow, sucking kisses that make his pulse jump and which clearly and satisfyingly are having an effect on Mako too.

“May I?” he asks, fingers curling under the hem of her shirt. It’s a struggle to catch a breath, and only becomes more difficult when Mako’s eyes open slowly to fix on him. He’s pinned under her dark gaze, trapped by the anticipation that hums in the thick air between them. Her belly flutters against the curl of his knuckles. Maybe she’s got that same edgy giddiness eating her up too.

There’s no hint of hesitation though when she catches her lip between her teeth and nods, the motion sharp and efficient and the hottest thing Raleigh’s ever seen. It hits him like a sucker punch right in the ribs, how badly he wants her to fuck him. His fingers tremble as she sits back on her heels, her nipples tight and peaked under the thin fabric of her tank top as she helps him drag it up and over her head. 

“Your turn,” she says, shaking her hair back into place. She slides her hands boldly under his tee, her thumbs hooked at the hem as she pushes it up to bare his skin in inches. The skip and stutter of her palms over his chest trail fire in their wake, and when he shifts his weight enough for her to drag his shirt off all the way, he gives in to the growing urge to roll them. She moves like she knows it’s coming, her weight settling into the crook of his elbow and her arms slinging around his neck before he pivots, and the soft pleased sound she makes as she lays back and looks up at him makes the butterflies all come alive at once with frantic excitement.

“You have a very nice body, Mister Becket,” she says, gaze caught in the shadows between their bellies before she hugs him and draws him back into a kiss.

Damn, but he loves kissing, and if it’s been years since he’s been held so close, it’s been longer still since he’s shared more than the brutal crush of mouths that came with quick, anonymous fucks. Maybe some other time they’d come together like that, teeth clicking and harsh, a hard wall at his back and her fists in the front of his sweater, but right now it’s easy like drifting, a flow that carries them along and meshes them together with their bodies alone. The petal-soft drag of her lips over his urges his mouth to open, and the hot thrill of her tongue tracing the edge of his teeth gets cranked up another notch by the light scratch of nails over his shoulders. For long heartbeats he forgets how to breathe and simply follows her lead. It hits him then that he’s already followed her to the end of the world and he hasn’t even considered that she might expect their paths to diverge from here. He swallows that down, promises himself they’ll talk later and figure out just what this will mean.

After another mix of slow kisses that ease the tension out of his insides, he mumbles, “You’re no slouch yourself, Miss Mori,” and noses aside her jaw to scatter kisses on the long slope of her neck. Her skin tastes sweet from the shower, and he licks at a tiny droplet of water that drips down behind her ear. As her fingers skim up from his elbows to his back, he props himself up on his wrists, gaze catching hers and a smile trying to take over his mouth. “But you know, you can still call me Raleigh.”

“Okay, Raleigh,” she echoes, the syllables of his name breaking on the point of her tongue. Her face brightens with a smile of her own as she cradles his face in her hands again. When he turns to nuzzle her palm, her smile fades from playfulness to pleasure, and her mouth goes completely slack when he catches her fingertips with his lips and he pushes his tongue between them.

“Did you like that?” he asks, delivering another lick to her palm and a small bite to the heel of her hand. She answers with her body, inching up on the bed and sliding her thigh alongside his. A quiet moan hangs in the air, the sound resonating on the surface of his skin. Every ounce of his being wants to hear her say it; to know without a doubt that the drag of his tongue over her skin is something she wants just as badly as he does. He’d always envied the teams that were lovers and knew their partners so intimately, but even if it’s been a while, fumbling along is all he’s ever known.

He dips his head to kiss the space between her breasts, and her skin feels impossibly smooth beneath his lips. “How about this?” he says, slinging a flirty grin at her before his tongue traces a path to swirl around one dark, peaked nipple. The hissing intake of her breath returns as a soft sigh, and he pulls out every trick in his book to figure out what gets her going. With wet drags of his tongue, he parses out the language of the sounds she makes and the way she guides him with the sinuous flex of her body. Her thighs tighten around his leg, hips working to grind herself against him, the heat and wetness of her cunt spreading to his skin.

Shaky with lust, he runs his open mouth along the inside of Mako’s arm to bury a kiss at the thin skin of her elbow. There’s a hint of salt gathering there with her sweat and it makes him ache to taste more of her. He tells her he wants to eat her out, and the muscles of his back tighten as he pictures fucking her with his tongue.

Mako shifts further back, moving to prop her shoulders against the wall behind her. She’s giving him enough space to avoid sliding to the floor, he realises, just before she says, “Please.” Her hands slide into his hair to make it more of a demand, and Raleigh groans as she pushes him down. Her knees draw up as he settles between them, his palm high on her smooth thigh. He’s always loved going down on his partners, but he can’t even remember the last time he was this turned on, needing to swallow every other breath and feeling like he’s going to blow it the second he gets a taste of her cunt. The shine of wetness is slicked all the way to the inside of her leg. He runs his thumb there and the shiver that goes through her echoes in him, too.

When they were in each other’s heads, he’d felt it, briefly, what it was like to live in her body. Different and not different, but like any memory it’s hollow now, hardly more than a wisp of what it’d been in the moment. Her fingers flex, tugging impatiently when he hovers with his mouth inches away from her, his breath shunting back to him and hinting at the way she’ll taste. Her thighs close like a trap when he draws a wide lick up along damp fabric and she pulls harder at his hair when he doesn’t immediately put his tongue to her again. She holds him in place as her hips lift, fucking up to meet his mouth, and the scratch of her nails on his scalp is as tender as it is plaintive. The hot curl of lust in his belly grows hotter, sizzling like water in a pan as it meets a sudden burst of joy. Maybe, he thinks as he places a light bite on the inside of her leg, maybe she loves him a little bit already too.

Raleigh hopes she can feel his smile. He hopes that tomorrow he can watch her work with the others without that awful ache in his arm. And he hopes that when the outside world does catch up with them, that they’ll both be ready for it.

“Raleigh, please,” she says, when his tongue only teases along seams and lace.

“You taste so good. I just--” He kisses the juncture of Mako’s thigh, and she makes a sound--rising and impatient and so damn sexy that Raleigh gives up on slow to chase after the chance to get her make even more noise. He drags his tongue along her panties again, finds where she’s as hard as he is and sucks at her through the cotton until they're both moaning and incapable of staying still.

He's fucking the mattress as she fucks his face, and when he hooks a thumb to pull aside the fabric keeping his mouth from her, she shudders hard, the heel of her foot pressing into the center of his back. 

His face is wet even before he plunges his tongue into her, and his chin is absolutely dripping by the time he’s licking up along the folds of her cunt to nuzzle at her clit. Sound pours out of him as he fucks her with his tongue, wordless moans that smear against the inside of her thighs as he pauses for breath. He can’t keep quiet, there’s something that’s built up inside him for days--years--and when Mako’s legs shake and shudder, flex and clamp tight to his head, it only makes him louder. He buries his face against her, holds there until there isn’t air left in his lungs, gasps for breath and goes back for more, again and again, until she’s holding his head at her clit, fucking up against his flicking tongue. She’s come twice already, triggered once by the push of his fingers into her, and once when he sucked her, gentle and slow as her body rolled like the ocean. This time she comes with his name on her lips, whispered over and over until it becomes a soft sigh and an even softer sob.

“Are you okay?” he says, propping himself up when her thighs fall open. He wipes his face on his shoulder as she nods, then kisses his way back up her body again, his arms trembling when her hand finds his cock.

“It’s good.” Her smile is shaky but genuine as she strokes him, and the curve of her mouth firms as her breath evens out. The wicked look when she wrings a fresh moan out of him drags another moan right on its heels, and the pleasure she takes out of turning his muscles to water tips him closer to the edge. He drops his gaze and his head, his mouth falling to her shoulder, feeling the flex of her arm as she works his cock hard and fast, fist tight near the head and _fuck_ , he wants to laugh and howl and kiss her all the same time because of all the things that she could’ve picked up from the Drift it’s the way he jerks himself off.

Her other arm curls around him, holds him close and he loses it, leaving a slick mess on her hip and a loud groan echoing off the walls, and his lashes feel wet and heavy when he slides down into the space beside her. His harsh breath evens out, broken every so often by a wretched sound pulled out from somewhere deep inside him. Mako clings to him through it, and eventually when the air has chilled his skin, she wordlessly cleans them both up with the corner of the sheet and returns to line her body up against his. There’s hardly any space wasted between them, and nothing has ever felt more right.

After what feels like hours without sleep claiming either of them, Raleigh turns on the radio again, fiddling with the controls to keep the volume too low for him to try and pick words out of the sound.

Mako nestles up behind him before he can roll onto his back again. Her face presses into the space between his shoulder blades, knees tucking up behind his, and Raleigh finds her arm to pull it around him. She relaxes after a while, her arm growing heavier, but he can feel that she wants to ask him something.

The question never comes, only the soft rhythm of her breath finally finding sleep. Whatever it is, or whatever it will be, Raleigh knows they’ll figure it out.

There’s no clock running anymore. They’ve got all the time in the world.


End file.
